Development Team Size

[svengalis]

Once SE start charging them, I'd say about 80% of FFXIV members will jump ship and quit, most are there just for the free ride.

Technically I am a subscriber although I have not logged in in months. And yeah I wont be paying for a game that wont be finished until the end of next year.

[Greatguardian]

minimum size for a dev team doing this much work is about 20-30. any less and the updates would take 3 times as long, and they would be biannually. (and tiny by comparison)

Where in the world are you getting those numbers from? They don't need artists or engine work done. They just need a few people to work with a pre-developed toolkit to generate new content.

[Rearden]

The only new skin I can think of since Abyssea is Mantis, Harpie and Hahava and that's probably something they already had and just never released.

[esoR]

coder's ( new abilities/adjustments) artists (mobs/gear) animators, effects artists, writers, internal testing, just to name a few of the basics. a lot is recycled, but it all has to go through different parts of the team. there is also the overhead people, and localization which isnt always concidered, but actually contributes to development. as well as the various directors (battle, quest, systems) and finally the producer.

if you count the directors into doing multiple parts covering some code, and doubling as writers, that's still much much more work than a 6 man team could feasibly carry.. doing 4 major/3 minor updates a year. putting 2-3 people per area, leads to between 20 and 30 people. i didn't list all of the jobs required, just the ones involved per patch off the top of my head.

[Gennadi]

all we know about XI is they are still doing the pumpkin contest. .. ..

I lub pumpkins

[Buffy]

The only thing I'm certain is that none of us have a damn clue how many people are currently responsible for the development of future content for FFXI.

[Vold]

Well I think it's a given that there are "a lot" of people involved in videogames. But I think whenever someone around here mentions the word developers, we're just thinking of the hand full of people that are responsible for what we get, and not so much everyone involved in getting what we get to us. Basically the bare bones of it all. But do remember SE has mentioned that FFXI has a small crew and they work "overtime" to do their jobs.

In regards to those people, I very much appreciate the work that they do. Whenever I talk smack my guns are pretty much aimed straight at the people in charge. Leaders are held responsible for success and failure. And the leaders at SE have many black marks in the MMO 'verse as far as I am concerned. Too much "we know what WE want/we know what's best for you" and not enough "we want to know what YOU want/what you say is best for you". Their worst mistake - treating MMOs like they're offline games and not listening to what their paying customers want. I guess it's a rough ride for any newbie to get into a new market but there's not many excuses to be had when your second MMO flops because you didn't learn anything the first time around and decided you wanted to reinvent the wheel.

[Catsby]

I remember asking about the FFXI developers some time ago. The names listed in the credits suggest there are a ton of people still working on it but they could easily be credited for expansion work years ago.

As far as I'm concerned though it's a skeleton crew.

[Babekeke]

For some reason, I'm sure that we were told at some point that there are 15 people on the dev team for ffxi.

Also I'm surprised that they plan to charge from nov/dec, when they're completely revamping the game (from what a friend told me - I didn't read the ffxiv stuff) in Jan 2013.

I'm technically a subscriber, but since I never bought any crista, or submitted my account details for ffxiv (I hope) they won't be taking any money from me, and my account will simply fade away. Assuming that the new payment method that we made for ffxi doesn't allow payments for ffxiv too. I'll have to keep an eye out for any additional payments being taken, I guess.

[Hashmalum]

Personally, I am willing to bet that FFXIV has ten times the number of personnel devoted to its development as FFXI.

Personally, I am willing to bet that we will never, ever, be officially given information on just how few people FFXI has at this point.

Personally, I am willing to bet that if the facts were known, there would be a major player revolt.